How the 1% recycles
by digby
I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but the 1% is on a buying spree. They have so much money they don’t know what to do with it. And so they are spending it on things that have no real value.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. I suppose it’s possible that the sale created a few jobs at the auction house and perhaps the heirs will hire a servant or two. (I’m sure they’ll tip their waiters well, anyway.) But, while I know that John Galt likes to wear a tiara from time to time, buying items owned by a dead person at insanely inflated prices is hardly what I would call “productive.”
The landmark auctions of The Collection of Elizabeth Taylor at Christie’s New York from December 3-17 realized a combined total of $156,756,576 (£100,324,209/ €120,702,563) with every single item sold. The sale drew unprecedented interest from bidders throughout the world, who gathered in Christie’s flagship Rockefeller Center saleroom to compete in person, on the phone, on-line and by absentee bid to win one of the Collection’s 1,778 lots of jewelry, fashion, decorative arts and film memorabilia. The total far exceeded Christie’s pre-sale expectations for the sale as a whole and for individual items, which were frequently hammered down for five, ten, or even 50 times their estimate in some cases.
Here’s how the rich determine “value”:
Look closely. The two diamond and gold bands on the right were valued at $6-8,000. They sold for $1,022,500.00
I like Elizabeth Taylor as much as anyone and I don’t doubt there’s collector value in those rings. But that’s obscene.
Still, everybody likes an auction. And there have been a lot of them this year. Unfortunately, this is the kind in which most Americans are participating:
Banks in November scheduled more than 26,000 homes to be sold at California foreclosure auctions, a 63% increase from October and a sign that a surge in discounted, bank-owned properties is on track to hit the market next year.
The uptick in scheduled auctions follows an increase last summer in homes entering the foreclosure process by receiving default notices and was largely driven by Bank of America. It appears that many of those homes are now quickly working their way through the process, said Daren Blomquist, a spokesman for RealtyTrac of Irvine, a data tracker that published the November data.
Update: If you are part of the one percent and you missed the Liz Taylor auction, it’s not too late to get a little stocking stuffer before the end of the New Year:
Ok, but that has to be unusual, right? Wrong.
The 200-foot Feadship, named April Fool, can be yours for a mere $69.5 million. The boat has a huge master stateroom, a Jacuzzi on the fourth-level sun deck and a sprawling outdoor eating lounge. Weill has only had the boat about five years, after trading up from his previous, smaller yacht…Jonathan Beckett [the yacht broker that’s selling April Fool] declined any comment on the boat’s ownership or reasons for the sale. But he said April Fool is in pristine condition, since it “was rarely used and never chartered.” Feadships, he adds, are the “Rolls Royce” of yachts. It also has an elevator, which is rare for a boat of less than 250 feet.
Who among us doesn’t need a yacht with an elevator?
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